Prologue
Avery
Six Months Earlier
The first thing Nate Crossland did when he walked through the front door was find me.
I knew because I was watching for him.
I’d been pretending I wasn’t for the better part of twenty minutes, sitting sideways on the arm of an overstuffed couch with a plastic cup balanced between my fingers while the house vibrated around me. Music pounded hard enough to make the floorboards hum beneath my boots. Somebody had opened the back doors despite the February cold, probably because there were at least a hundred people crammed into a house meant for thirty, and every few seconds a gust of freezing air cut through the heat and brought the smell of cigarette smoke and weed inside with it.
My friend was talking to me. I had absolutely no idea what she was saying.
Because Nate had finally arrived.
And Jesus fucking Christ.
There were men who knew they were attractive and dressed accordingly, every piece of clothing selected to make sure everyone else knew it too. Nate somehow managed to be worse because he looked like he’d barely thought about it. Faded jeans. Scuffed brown work boots. A charcoal Henley stretched across his shoulders, the sleeves shoved carelessly up his forearms. His dark hair was hidden beneath a black baseball cap he’d put on backward, which should not have done anything for me at twenty-two years old and yet consistently did terrible things to my judgment.
He shut the door behind him and exchanged a few words with the guy standing beside it.
Then his eyes moved across the room.
They found mine.
His mouth tipped up.
There it was.
That stupid fucking feeling.
Four months of this man, and apparently my body still hadn’t figured out how to behave when he looked at me.
“Earth to Avery.”
I blinked and finally looked at Claire. “What?”
She followed my stare and groaned. “Oh. Never mind.”
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You made a sound.”
“Because you become medically stupid when that man walks into a room.”
I flipped her off without taking my eyes off Nate.
He was making his way toward us now, stopping twice because people wanted to talk to him. Nate knew everybody. Or everybody knew Nate. I hadn’t figured out which came first. He had this irritating ability to belong wherever he was, equally comfortable drinking cheap beer in somebody’s shitty rental house or sitting across from my father at a restaurant while Dad interrogated him about what he planned to do after graduation.
He’d survived that conversation too.
Actually, he’d charmed my father.
Asshole.
By the time he reached me, I was trying very hard to look like I hadn’t spent the last half hour waiting for him.
Nate stopped between my knees.
“Hey.”
That was it.
One word, and I smiled.
“Hey.”
His gaze moved over my face before dropping briefly to my mouth. “You started without me.”
“You were late.”
“I was working.”
“Sounds like a personal problem.”
His hand settled naturally on my thigh, warm even through my jeans. “You miss me?”
“No.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“Devastating, I’m sure.”
“It is. Been thinking about you all fucking day.”
Claire made a gagging noise beside me. “And that’s my cue to find literally anyone else.”
Nate glanced at her. “Good seeing you too, Claire.”
“Eat shit, Crossland.”
“Probably won’t.”
She disappeared into the crowd.
Nate looked back at me, and I laughed. “She loves you.”
“She’s obsessed with me.”
“Everyone is, apparently.”
“Not everyone.”
His thumb moved once over the inside of my thigh.
My stomach tightened.
“I’m working on you.”
I looked down at his hand and then back up. “Four months is a pretty long time to still be working on someone.”
Something shifted in his expression.
It happened occasionally when one of us accidentally acknowledged what this had become.
Four months.
Four months since I’d gone home with Nate after a party and told myself it was going to be one night.
Four months of sleeping in his bed more often than mine. Four months of his toothbrush appearing beside mine, of him showing up at my apartment with food when I forgot to eat, of sex at ridiculous hours and arguments over stupid things and him knowing when I was upset before I’d said a word. Four months of getting drunk together, getting high together, staying awake until sunrise talking about everything and nothing.
We didn’t talk much about what we were.
Everyone else seemed to have decided for us.
Nate squeezed my thigh. “Come here.”
“I’m already here.”
“Closer.”
There was nowhere closer unless I climbed inside his clothes, but apparently Nate disagreed. He caught my hips and pulled me off the arm of the couch until I was standing between his legs.
“You’re needy tonight,” I murmured.
“You look fucking beautiful tonight.”
There wasn’t a trace of teasing in his voice.
That was the problem with Nate. He could be vulgar enough to make me choke on my drink and then say something completely sincere without warning.
I glanced down at myself. Black jeans. Cropped sweater. Boots. “I’m wearing clothes you’ve seen a hundred times.”
“Didn’t say anything about the clothes.”
His fingers slipped around the back of my neck, and he kissed me.
It wasn’t obscene. Not yet. Just familiar and warm, his mouth moving against mine while his thumb brushed beneath my ear.
I tasted beer when I kissed him back.
And something else.
I pulled away slightly. “You’ve already been drinking.”
“One beer.”
“Before driving?”
“Luke drove.”
“Ah.”
“See? Responsible adult.”
“That’s generous.”
Nate grinned, kissed me once more, then glanced at my cup. “What’re you drinking?”
“No idea.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“Claire made it.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“She loves me.”
“Claire also drank windshield washer fluid on a dare last semester.”
“It was one sip.”
“It was fucking windshield washer fluid, Avery.”
I laughed, and Nate took my cup, sniffed it suspiciously, then drank from it anyway.
“Hypocrite.”
“Jesus.” He grimaced. “That’s disgusting.”
“Give it back.”
“No.”
“Nate.”
“You have absolutely no idea what’s in this.”
“I know there’s vodka.”
“Yeah, I think they put the whole fucking bottle in there.”
He set it on a nearby table.
I stared at him. “Did you just take my drink?”
“I’ll get you another one.”
“You’re very bossy for someone who isn’t my boyfriend.”
There it was again.
That tiny shift.
His hand was still resting against my hip.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “About that.”
My heart did something uncomfortable.
Then someone slammed into Nate’s shoulder from behind and shouted his name, and the moment disappeared beneath laughter and introductions and another drink being shoved into his hand.
Maybe that was for the best.
We were good when we didn’t examine things too closely.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
An hour later, I was high enough that the edges of everything had gone pleasantly soft.
Not fucked up.
Just good.
Really fucking good.
The party had gotten louder and hotter. Somebody had switched the music, and people were dancing in the living room now, bodies packed together beneath strings of cheap LED lights. Nate had disappeared upstairs with Luke fifteen minutes earlier, and I’d found Claire in the kitchen with a group of people I vaguely knew.
There was a little white powder on the counter.
That wasn’t unusual.
None of this was unusual.
That was probably the problem.
“Want some?” someone asked.
I looked at it.
I should have said no.
I’d promised myself earlier that week that I was slowing down. Not stopping. I wasn’t an addict. I didn’t need to stop. I just needed to stop waking up on Sundays unable to remember getting home. Stop missing morning classes. Stop pretending my mother didn’t notice when I showed up to Sunday dinner looking like death.
Just slow down.
That was all.
Then Claire leaned against me and laughed about something, and somebody handed me something, and I thought, Fuck it.
One night.
I could have one night.
So I did.
The rush came quickly.
My heart picked up. My skin warmed. The exhaustion I’d been carrying all week vanished beneath something bright and sharp.
For a while, I felt incredible.
I danced.
I drank something else.
Nate came downstairs and found me in the middle of the living room, and the second his hands landed on my waist, I turned into him.
“There you are,” I said.
His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at me.
“What?”
“You’re high.”
“So are you.”
“Yeah.”
“Then stop judging me.”
“I’m not judging you.”
His hands moved up my sides. “How much?”
I shrugged.
“Avery.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Dad voice.”
Nate barked out a laugh. “I don’t have a fucking dad voice.”
“You absolutely do.”
“I asked how much you took.”
“And I don’t know.”
His amusement faded.
I rolled my eyes. “Nate, I’m fine.”
He studied me another second.
Then I reached up and turned his hat around so the bill faced forward.
His eyebrows lifted.
“No.”
I laughed and pulled it off completely.
“Avery.”
I put it on my own head backward.
His eyes dropped over me slowly.
“Oh, fuck me,” he muttered.
I smiled. “Maybe later.”
“Definitely later.”
There was nothing hesitant about the way he kissed me this time.
His arm wrapped around my waist and pulled me flush against him. I laughed into his mouth, fingers gripping the front of his Henley, everything in me buzzing pleasantly. Nate’s mouth moved to my jaw, then below my ear.
“You better not leave a mark.”
He kissed the exact same spot again.
“Nate.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
His teeth grazed my skin.
I shoved at his chest, laughing. “You’re an asshole.”
“You like me.”
“Debatable.”
He lifted his head and looked at me.
Even high, even surrounded by people, something about the way Nate looked at me could make the rest of the room disappear.
“Yeah?” he asked.
My smile faded slightly.
He had beautiful eyes. I’d always thought that. Dark enough to look almost brown until light caught them properly. And right then they were fixed entirely on me.
I touched the edge of his jaw.
“I like you a little.”
“Liar.”
“Maybe.”
He kissed my forehead.
Such a stupidly tender gesture from a man who’d had his teeth against my neck ten seconds earlier.
I loved that about him.
I didn’t tell him.
Maybe I should have.
The night broke apart after that.
For a long time afterward, I tried to reconstruct it.
I remembered being in the kitchen.
I remembered laughing so hard my stomach hurt.
I remembered Nate’s hat still being on my head.
I remembered taking something from somebody.
I remembered thinking I’d already had some.
I remembered taking it anyway.
There were drinks.
A bathroom.
Someone sitting on the edge of a bathtub.
Claire asking if I was okay.
Me telling her I was fucking fantastic.
Then—
Nothing.
Not sleep.
Not darkness.
Just an absence.
A section of my own life somebody had cut cleanly out.
Nate told me later that he’d been looking for me for twenty-three minutes.
He remembered the number.
I didn’t ask why.
I think he’d been counting.
He checked the kitchen first. Then outside. Then both bathrooms. He called me three times, but my phone was downstairs underneath somebody’s jacket.
Eventually Claire told him she’d seen me go upstairs.
That was where he found me.
I don’t remember him opening the bedroom door.
I don’t remember him saying my name.
I don’t remember him crossing the room.
But sometimes, even now, I dream about his voice anyway.
Avery.
Then louder.
Avery.
Then terrified.
Consciousness came back in pieces.
A bright light.
Something over my face.
Voices.
My body moving when I wasn’t moving it.
Then Nate.
His face above me.
No hat anymore.
His hair was a mess, and I’d never seen that expression on him before.
“Nate?”
My voice didn’t sound like mine.
His whole face changed.
“Hey. Hey, baby.”
Someone tried to move him away.
Nate ignored them.
“Stay with me.”
“What happened?”
“You’re okay.”
I could hear sirens.
Or maybe we were already inside the ambulance.
Everything blurred.
“Nate.”
“I’m here.”
His hand closed around mine.
I tried squeezing it.
Couldn’t tell whether my fingers moved.
“I’m tired.”
“No.”
His voice sharpened so violently that I flinched.
“No, Avery. Look at me.”
“I just want to sleep.”
“I know. You can’t.”
His eyes were wet.
That scared me more than anything else.
Nate didn’t cry.
I’d never seen him cry.
“Nate?”
“Look at me.” His hand tightened painfully around mine. “Come on, beautiful. Eyes open.”
I tried.
God, I tried.
“Nate—”
“Stay with me.”
His voice cracked.
And then everything disappeared again.
My mother didn’t speak to Nate at the hospital.
My father did.
I never learned exactly what he said.
I knew it wasn’t kind.
My little sister cried so hard when she saw me that I started crying too.
I learned words I hadn’t expected to apply to me.
Overdose.
Respiratory depression.
Toxicology.
Substance-use assessment.
Treatment.
My parents knew more than I’d realized.
That was perhaps the most humiliating part.
I thought I’d been hiding it.
I hadn’t.
Mom knew about the classes I’d missed. Dad knew I’d been borrowing money because I’d burned through mine. My sister knew I’d lied to her three separate times about why I’d canceled plans.
Everyone knew.
Nate knew too.
Maybe not how bad it had gotten.
But enough.
And somehow I’d been the last person to find out.
Three days after I got home, my parents told me they’d found a treatment facility.
I screamed.
I cried.
I accused them of overreacting.
Then my little sister left the room because she couldn’t listen anymore.
That shut me up.
I agreed to go the following Monday.
Nate came over Sunday night.
He stood on the porch with both hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans.
Same boots.
Same dark Henley.
No hat this time.
He looked exhausted.
I’d spent months thinking Nate Crossland was almost offensively attractive. Apparently nearly dying hadn’t fixed that particular defect in my brain.
If anything, seeing him after four days apart hurt.
There were shadows beneath his eyes. Stubble covered his jaw. His hair looked like he’d been dragging his hands through it.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then Nate looked past me toward the house.
“Your dad gonna shoot me if I come inside?”
Despite everything, a small laugh escaped me.
“No.”
“That’s encouraging.”
“He might punch you.”
“I’d probably let him.”
My smile disappeared.
“Nate.”
“I know.”
I stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind me.
Cold air immediately bit through my sweatshirt.
Nate noticed.
Of course he did.
He pulled off his jacket and held it out.
“I don’t need—”
“Put it on, Avery.”
Normally I would’ve argued.
I didn’t have the energy.
I took it and slipped my arms through the sleeves. It smelled like him.
That almost broke me.
Nate leaned against the railing.
“So Monday?”
I nodded.
“How long?”
“Thirty days to start.”
His jaw tightened.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah.”
I looked down at the porch boards. “They don’t want me talking to anyone for the first week.”
“Okay.”
“And after that, I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
I hated how calm he sounded.
“Can you stop saying okay?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know.”
He pushed away from the railing.
“Avery, I haven’t slept properly in four fucking days. Every time I close my eyes, I see you on that floor.”
My throat tightened.
“Nate—”
“I thought you were dead.”
The words stopped me.
His voice wasn’t loud.
That made them worse.
“When I walked into that room, I thought you were fucking dead.”
“I know.”
“No. You don’t.”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“I couldn’t wake you up. You weren’t answering me. You were barely fucking breathing.”
Tears burned behind my eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want you to be sorry.”
“I don’t know what else to say.”
“I don’t either.”
Silence stretched between us.
Then Nate stepped closer.
“I’m stopping.”
I looked up.
“What?”
“All of it.”
“Nate.”
“I mean it.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yeah, I fucking do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You think I’m touching that shit again after watching you almost die?”
“You didn’t make me take it.”
“I was doing it with you.”
“That doesn’t make it your fault.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
His voice rose slightly before he caught himself.
Then he looked at me for a long time.
“We stop partying for a while. We stop using. Whatever. I don’t give a shit, Avery. If that’s what you need, that’s what we do.”
My chest hurt.
Because I believed him.
That was the worst part.
Nate wasn’t saying it because he thought it was what I wanted to hear. If I told him I never wanted to walk into another party again, he’d probably never go to one either.
And I loved him for it.
I loved him.
There it was.
Too late and at exactly the wrong time.
“Nate, I can’t.”
His face went still.
“Can’t what?”
“Do this.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know what it means.”
“No, actually, I fucking don’t.”
“I have to get better.”
“And I’m stopping too.”
“This isn’t about you stopping.”
“Then what the fuck is it about?”
I wrapped his jacket tighter around myself because I was suddenly freezing.
“Everything.”
His eyes searched mine.
“The last four months. I don’t even recognize myself anymore.”
His expression hardened. “Because of me?”
“No.”
“Sounds a lot like you’re saying because of me.”
“I’m saying because of me.”
He looked away.
I stepped closer.
“Nate, look at me.”
He didn’t.
So I touched his arm.
His jaw flexed.
“I love being with you.”
That got his attention.
His eyes snapped back to mine.
I hadn’t meant to say love.
Maybe he heard it.
Maybe he didn’t.
I kept going because if I stopped, I wasn’t going to finish.
“I love being with you so much that I don’t know how to say no to anything when I’m with you. Another party? Sure. Another drink? Fine. Stay up all night? Fuck it. Take something? Why not? And I’m not blaming you because you’re doing the exact same shit. I’m making my own choices.”
“So we’ll make different ones.”
My eyes filled.
“You make it sound so easy.”
“Because losing you isn’t an option I’m interested in.”
That did it.
A tear slid down my cheek.
Nate stared at it.
Then he swore softly and pulled me against him.
I went.
Of course I fucking went.
My face pressed into his chest, and his arms closed around me so tightly it almost hurt. I breathed him in and hated myself for how immediately safe I felt.
“I can’t do this,” I whispered.
His hand moved over the back of my head.
“Then don’t.”
“I mean us.”
He stopped moving.
For several seconds, Nate didn’t release me.
Then he did.
Slowly.
I immediately wanted him back.
“What are you saying?”
“I need to go away and figure out how to exist without all of this.”
“All of this,” he repeated.
I swallowed.
“Yes.”
“And I’m included in that.”
I couldn’t answer.
He laughed once, but there was nothing amused about it.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Nate—”
“No, I get it.”
“You don’t.”
“I get it perfectly fucking well, Avery.”
He turned away and walked several steps across the porch.
I followed him.
“Please don’t make this ugly.”
He spun around.
“You almost died four days ago, and now you’re telling me I can’t see you anymore. What exactly is the pretty version of this conversation?”
I started crying harder.
His anger disappeared almost instantly.
That somehow made it worse.
“Fuck.”
He came back.
His hands framed my face, thumbs wiping beneath my eyes.
“Don’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Little late.”
I closed my eyes.
Nate pressed his forehead against mine.
Neither of us spoke.
Then he asked, very quietly, “Is this what you actually want?”
No.
The answer came so quickly it almost left my mouth.
I wanted Nate.
I wanted his bed and his stupid backward hat and his hand on my thigh in the car. I wanted three-in-the-morning food runs and sex before class and him stealing my drinks because he thought they were too strong. I wanted his toothbrush beside mine.
I wanted all of it.
And four nights ago, I’d almost died wanting all of it.
“I think it’s what I need.”
His eyes closed.
I felt the moment he accepted it.
Not because he agreed.
Because I’d asked.
When he opened his eyes again, something in them had changed.
“Okay.”
My chest cracked open.
“Nate.”
“You said you need me to let you go.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Neither do I.”
He kissed my forehead.
Then my cheek.
Then finally my mouth.
It wasn’t like the kisses we usually shared. There was no teasing, no teeth, no impatient hands pulling me closer.
It was slow.
Painfully slow.
I grabbed the front of his shirt and kissed him harder because I couldn’t stand how much it felt like goodbye.
His control broke for half a second.
His arm wrapped around my waist. His other hand slid into my hair. He kissed me the way I knew him—deep and hungry and familiar enough that my entire body recognized him.
Then Nate pulled away.
We were both breathing hard.
He looked at me like he wanted to memorize something.
“You’re the most beautiful fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”
A sob escaped me.
“Don’t say that right now.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m trying to let you go.”
His thumb brushed over my cheek.
“Then I guess we both fucking suck at this.”
I laughed through my tears.
For one tiny second, he smiled too.
Then he took a step backward.
His hands fell away from me.
The cold rushed immediately into every place he’d been touching.
“Go get better, Avery.”
I hugged his jacket around myself.
“What about you?”
Nate looked at me for a long moment.
“I’ll figure it out.”
I wanted to tell him I loved him.
The words sat right behind my teeth.
I didn’t say them.
Nate walked down the porch steps.
“Nate.”
He stopped.
I almost did it.
Almost told him.
Instead I said, “Your jacket.”
He glanced back at me.
“Keep it.”
Then he walked toward his truck.
I stood on the porch wearing Nate Crossland’s jacket and watched the man I’d spent four months convincing myself I wasn’t falling in love with drive away.
The next morning, I went to rehab.
And for six months, I didn’t call him.
